If there's one thing I don't like about winter trout fishing, it's numb feet.
I'm standing in water that's about 55 degrees, with feet clad in non-insulated wader booties and armored with thick, heavy, rigid wading boots. The boot soles are about an inch thick, which creates an endemic amount of sensory deprivation anyway. The frigid water sloughs away most remaining sensation, so I feel like I'm walking on stilts when I wade fish a trout stream in the winter.
In a way that's a good thing because it encourages me to stand in one place and fish it thoroughly from every angle. The trouble starts when I try to wander. Even through polarized sunglasses, rocks look flat and fairly flush with the bottom. I find out differently when my shin crashes into a rock. I try to skirt it and collide with another rock. Off balance, I skirt the second rock and plunge down about 8 inches into a pocket. At this point your balance depends solely on the precarious footing of the higher leg, which is usually wedged between a couple of rocks.
On the Little Red River, you've got the additional hazard of coontail moss that covers rocks and the spaces between them. It looks like a smooth carpet until you try to walk across it. You crash into a rock or worse, slip down the side of a rock into a pocket, or worse still, onto a different rock that sends you sprawling. Once your momentum leans you forward, you begin a slow, inexorable and ultimately bone-chilling crash landing. With any favor from the Almighty above, you avert a full immersion and return upright with only a half-gallon or so of water pouring into your waders. That'll get your heart rate up, but your clothes absorb it and warm it up fairly quickly. You'll never be comfortable after that, but it's tolerable.
It feels worse when the fishing is over and you pull off your waders. It feels kind of humiliating, really. If you're smart, you brought extra clothes, but changing entails the inconvenience and potential embarrassment of undressing in a public river access parking lot. I've done it often enough that I'm deft and artful. It's all about organization and having every garment at the ready. With a whir of arms and legs, a complete change takes mere seconds, even with the inevitable snagging of denim and socks against moist legs and feet.
Again, being in the water is the most daunting challenge. In low light it's hard to see the bottom when wading, and it's further complicated by wading in a moving medium. Even a slight current, like the one I encountered Tuesday at Libby Shoal on the Little Red River, conveys a sensation similar to walking on ice.
I toe the riverbed before me cautiously in search of a drop that will put me over my head. That has never actually happened, but I did plunge knee deep into silt downstream at Mossy Shoal. It was like being in quicksand, and when momentum carried me underwater and sideways, it was really hard to get back upright. It totally freaked me out, and it didn't help that one of my dearest friends stood nearby laughing so hard that he coughed and choked. Waders were extraneous because I and the river were one. I slogged to the bank, peeled off the waders and emptied them, wrung out my clothes as best I could, and then struggled to get back in the waders, which was much harder than getting them off. Thank goodness that happened on a warm summer day.
Staggering among the rocks and moss on Tuesday, I eventually reached a place at the bottom of Libby Shoal where the footing was sure and solid. It was almost dark, and rainbow trout rose to some kind of insect hatch. It was an evening for throwing tiny dry flies that could ride on the film, but neither I nor my partner had any "drys." He fished a nymph in the shoal far above me, and I -- knowing I had nothing a trout would bite at that time -- merely stood and marveled.
Against purple looking water and a pink sky, an arched back and a dorsal fin broke the surface, followed by the dappled tops of tails. I heard the fish delicately slurp the insects off the surface. It was a short but arduous journey to reach that spot, but the sights and sounds were worth the trouble.